The New York Mets • A Sports Analytics Story

Our experience with SAS has been fantastic. SAS helps drive revenue and helps make us more productive every day. And we’re eager to continue the relationship for the long term just to continue to learn and get better and see what else SAS can help us do.Lou DePaoli Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue OfficerNew York Mets

The New York Mets are a major league baseball team based in New York City. The team competes in the National League East division. The Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.

The Mets have won two World Series titles, in 1969 and 1986. They have appeared in the World Series five times, most recently in 2015.

Mets fans facts

3 million fans attend games and events at the Mets’ Citi Field ballpark every year.

62 percent of Mets fans who come to a game attend with a family member.

Fans who travel at least 40 miles to watch a game at Citi Field usually attend Saturday night games.

Fans who live more than an hour away like to attend Sunday games with earlier start times, and they like to come with family.

Friday games are more popular with millennials.

Analytics moves from the field to the business office

The idea of using advanced statistics to measure the performance of players has become standard in baseball. Now that thinking has moved to the business office, where managers and owners are using analytics to measure sales and marketing performance.

The Mets needed a smart way to segment and target fans for dozens of promotions on different days of the week and with variably priced packages.

The Mets are a small organization dealing with big data, and they needed a way to to query their data warehouse and deliver information from millions of transactions very quickly to team executives and owners.

Using analytics to up-sell fans means getting them to come to one more game, to watch one more inning on TV, to buy one more soda at the stadium, or to follow the team on one more social media site. Analytics has helped with these cross-selling efforts.

10 ways the New York Mets use analytics

Segment customers by demographics and purchase history.

Offer next-best promotions to fans for tickets and merchandise.

Provide one-to-one fan engagement based on known activation triggers.

Improve cold-call sales by 20 percent.

Reactivate fans who have not attended a game in more than a year.

Optimize game-time schedules based on fan preferences.

Develop programs to improve the Mets social media following.

Understand which sales reps operate best under which conditions.

Share revenue data with team executives and owners.

Understand why certain games sell better than others, and what transaction days are heaviest for ticket sales.

Data visualization technology from SAS helps you explore all relevant data to identify key relationships, outliers, clusters, trends and more. Once you gain critical insights, you can use them to make more informed business decisions.

Turn passion for sports into valuable insight with analytics technology that helps you understand fan preferences and acquire the right players. You can discover how to actively engage with fans and how to build a winning team they'll cheer for again and again.

Every channel you market through yields information about your customers. Don’t waste that valuable insight. Instead, incorporate what you learn from each channel into every campaign. From transactions and customer behavior to qualitative sources and external resources, everything is available when and where you need it.

It’s a brand-new ballgame with analytics

1-to-1 fan engagement offers a home run for the New York Mets

From the minute you enter Citi Field and see the names of New York Mets fans etched in the brick walkway, you know that every detail of this ballpark has been built with the fans in mind.

“In a few hours we’re going to have 40,000 fans right outside this window cheering for the Mets,” said John Morris, the Mets’ Executive Director of Business Intelligence and Analytics, before a recent game. “That’s a product that everyone in this building delivers. And everyone here takes a very proud sense of ownership of that product.”

From college students in stadium seats to VIPs in executive suites, there’s a seat at Citi Field for everyone. And the Mets business team uses analytics to help build the ideal fan experience based on each fan’s budget, needs and lifestyle.

“SAS helps us leverage our staff, and it helps us leverage our messaging tools to deliver the right message to the right fan,” said Morris. “At the same time, SAS allows us to report the success of those campaigns to our owners and managers. SAS allows everyone here to punch above their weight.”

The bases are loaded with fan data

“Once you get all that information, we can figure out: Here’s what an avid season ticket holder looks like. Here’s what someone who buys a half season looks like. Here’s someone who only comes to one game,” explains Lou DePaoli, Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer. “And then you can build your platform targeted toward those people. Being smarter marketers makes us a lot more efficient on the back end.”

How do you get fans to come to one more game, purchase one more item online, watch one more game on TV or follow the Mets on one more social media channel? And how do you reactivate fans who haven’t attended a game in a long time? According to DePaoli, analytics helps find those answers.

I remember them winning back in ’69, and then back in ‘86. My love for the Mets will always be there. Citi Field gives you the effect of bringing the whole family and the whole community together. Whether we’re last place or first place, I am a diehard Mets fan.Harold MaldonadoNew York Mets Fan

Swinging for the fences with data visualization

Everyone at the Mets ­– from analysts and sales associates to executives and owners – views sales and revenue reports through a simple, mobile-friendly dashboard.

“Using SAS Visual Analytics allows us to take the key indicators and put them in a nice, user-friendly format for owners and management to use for making decisions,” says DePaoli.

“SAS Visual Analytics is really the workhorse of the organization,” says Morris. “It allows us to take the output of our data warehouse and display it across multiple constituencies inside the organization. Being able to take the temperature of the organization from wherever you are or whatever you’re doing allows us to go home at night.”

How are your favorite teams using analytics?

From ice hockey and rowing to baseball and basketball, teams around the world are using analytics to score fans and win competitions. Meet five analytically driven teams, and learn how to turn their successes into wins for your organization.

Grand slam analytics

Even in the modern era of targeted online marketing, the Mets have found continued success through telephone marketing campaigns when they apply analytics to fan data.

“We have seen a 20 percent lift in our cold lead conversions,” says Morris. “SAS delivers the best models.”

For example, Morris describes one decision tree that tells what to offer to each fan based on number of tickets bought, types of games attended, money spent and more.

With this level of insight, the Mets know more about their fans than ever before, and they're using that information to keep fans coming back game after game and season after season.

And Mets fans are pleased too. “We work with this guy named Anthony. He calls us every time we’re here, and we have a really good relationship with him," explains season ticket holder Jessica Ticino. "Citi Field is above and beyond. I just love the energy here. You want the stadium to love you as much as you love it.”

One winning goal. Endless opportunity. Find out who else is using SAS® for sports.

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The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.